Day 75,042
To His Imperial Majesty Zer Manetho:
Allow me to begin by thanking you for your boundless benevolence. I was frankly shocked to see that the Ninth Descendant of Empress Benerib, Embodiment of the Divine Sun, Viceroy of the Lemuria Colony, and Rightful Ruler of All that the Sun’s Light Touches would consider a lowly scholar like myself worthy of notice. Imagine my surprise when I saw that you had, in such beautifully florid language, deigned to apologize for the circumstances that caused us to part ways in the past. How I wept upon seeing you lower yourself to acknowledge that a humble creature like myself could possibly have been correct in criticizing the ways in which you poured vast quantities of aether into horrible, corrupting machines to produce living tools. Of course, I must also thank you, Your Majesty, for you have spared me from the pain of knowing you might be too burdened by this guilt! After all, you seem to have made a point of reminding me how different you must be from your predecessors for being so merciful—so utterly magnanimous—as to allow even a wretched construct to be more than a tortured slave bound eternally to your will!
Unfortunately, I do not intend to return to Abbe in the foreseeable future. I am far too busy attempting to assist the residents of the world of Dagr, where the war between the houses of your great empire and the infernal lords of the Exarchate has turned into something of a proxy battle using local civilizations. Once I have finished here, I expect I will need to check on Lemuria once again. I fear that, since you abandoned the vessel, its weapons have fallen into the hands of mere mortals who, lacking the same sort of divine wisdom the heavens granted you upon your birth, often come rather close to destroying themselves with your refuse. Perhaps I shall join you when I have ensured that the work of your ancestors no longer poses a threat to all worlds. In the meantime, I must reject your invitation with an almost unbearably heavy heart.
I have the honor to remain, with the profoundest veneration, Your Imperial Majesty’s most faithful subject and dutiful servant,
Linnaeus von Roslin